A Holiday & Funeral

Just when I had happily packed my luggage for my trip to Thailand tomorrow for the long awaited reunion with my entire family and cousins in Songkhla, I received a bombshell that jolted me into paranoiac and highly tensed head the whole day.

My cousin in Bangkok sent me a Facebook message in the morning that her ailing father was dying and fading off quickly on his hospital bed. I quickly called my mother to alert her that her only brother was dying any minute and my cousin wanted her to speak to her dying brother's ears via mobile phone to assure him to go in peace! It gave me creeps for this kind of modern hi-tech comforts for the dying.

My old mother sadly started to get emo and didn't know how to call overseas from my brother's house. My brother was away in Bangkok as he runs a business there. I tried frantically so hard to guide my old mum over the phone the way to dial my cousin's mobile phone in Bangkok but fruitless.

As a child, my uncle studied in the most prestigious Debsirin School in Bangkok before graduating as a medical doctor from Siriraj Medical School, also in Bangkok. He married a gracious Thai royalty and migrated to work in US where he served at hospitals and clinics in Philadelphia and Fresno, California before returning to retire and lived in the elite area of Soi Rajkroo which is wholly owned by the families of my late uncle the ex-premier Chatichai Choonhavan who was overthrown in the 1992 coup. His grand daughter is the most famous actress who graced SK-II counters in Thailand today which I blogged once.

My uncle finally breathed his last yesterday afternoon after being in coma as a result of stroke many years ago. My family's debating dramas started whether to forgo the 11 air tickets to Ha'adyai and proceed to Bangkok for the funeral. Ding, Dong, Ding, Dong, finally my mother broke the shocking news to us that my uncle requested for NO FUNERAL and had pledged to donate his whole dead body to the Siriraj's Medical School for research! OMG! I had endless goose bumps and sweats of confusion! He was so selfless and kind till the end.
I do not have the guts to do that, not to mention pledge my organs, YET. Would you donate your body for medical research and let the undergrad doctors to slice into pieces for studies? The Buddhists believe that the heavens will bring all the souls with them when they have pledged their organs upon death. Since I am so sinful and I should consider to pledge too. Will you do it?

Bangkok's Siriraj Hospital which is located by the Chao Phraya's River.

Let me tell you briefly about this famous Siriraj Hospital & Medical Museum where even many Korean pop stars had purposely made visits to see the bizarre exhibits! It is the oldest hospital in Thailand and was founded by King Chulalongkorn in 1888 who named it after his young Prince Siriraj who died very young. Today it houses 6 museums being grouped into 1 with creepy exhibits dedicated to the death and illness. Macabre fans could see the embalmed bodies of murderers, ghastly deaths besides all the wrong births, twins and many others. Blek!

A male human's Elephantiasis-infected human scrotum

The head of a real victim of a gunshot wound where the head is neatly sawed in half lengthwise, to illustrate the path of the bullet-hole

A real Siamese twins who died

I will make my first visit to that world's grimmest museum someday and hope they won't display my uncle's body there for any reasons.

All the photos were swiped from various internet posts for illustration purposes only without permission, so forgive me please la dei!

Down Memory Lane

Today, my old and frail mum is happy like a lark after asking me again the time my sister would be arriving tomorrow. I have just one older sister who was quite a well known model bimbo in Penang during her younger hey days for her natural Pan-Asian looks and sexy low-cuts dressing that would send all the horny old men ogling inside the popular Cinta Discotheque at Rasa Sayang Hotel. She has remarried and currently lives comfortably in the outskirts of Greater London with her Swedish hubby & kid. I have not visited her fabulous home yet and she has been proudly sending me satellite photos to brag about the length of her house's lawn which spans some 400 feet long with a natural river running across! Dei, that is really supposed to be an excellent Feng Shui for wealth to flow continuously. No wonder she is so bloody rich without any inheritance! So this pretty bimbo lass would be arriving from London at 2.40pm tomorrow.

My mum has happily booked and is paying for all of us to fly to Ha'adyai next week for a long awaited reunion for over 10 fellas. It has been over 2 decades since we made a visit there as a whole family. My playmate cousin who has inherited his father's hotel in Ha'adyai has kindly invited us to put up for free! We have been staying in this hotel for free since I was a small kid and it has recently been refurbish all over again to upgrade it to 5 Star eventually. I am having real butterflies and mixed feelings about the trip down memory lane because so many dramatic things had happened since I left my last footprints 10 years ago.

Both my sister and brother had graduated from South Australia and Canada when we attended my late grandfather's funeral in Thailand many years ago. It was a sad period and the local radio was blaring whole day the funeral details of the passing of the Chief Police Officer. The news lurking inside the vegetable market stalls became hotter when mum and her sister quarreled like kids over the wreaths of the funeral. Adding on, my 2 oldest male cousins fought and screamed over the many medals given by H.M The King to my grandpa. I just sat there and watched the soap dramas without grabbing my share of medals! The folks in that small town simply loved to gossip anything! In earlier years, I had smartly taken all the most valuable old antiques pieces that were some 100 years old from grandpa's shelves. I simply begged my old grandpa to just give me the heirlooms when I was still a school boy and he did as no one else was interested then! Heh, heh.. I might sell all these Ching Dynasty porcelain antiques someday or just donate them to the Museum.


I have much vivid memories of Songkhla as I was whisked there to greet my grandparents when I was barely 2 weeks old then. My growing up years was really kampung-like and it was boring like hell. I used to walk aimlessly along the nearby lakeside and Samila beach to fondle the golden mermaid's breasts!

The mermaid's breast is so shiny as thousands of tourists have fondled it! My DNA is definitely there too. I used to hear folk tales that the mermaid actually slipped off at night and swam into the sea everyday. She would return before dawn. I used to believe all these craps cos I was such a fucking stupid ass boy! LOL..

Take note there is a rat shaped island behind the mermaid and that's called "Rat Island" to the Thais. I have never been there and I don't like rats either.

My playground was on the hills overlooking the Tinsulanonda Bridge which connects to the highway leading to Bangkok. Did you know that "Soi Petchkasem" is the name of the longest road that starts from Bangkok till the South of Thailand?

There were no toys at home. Mosquito killing and fishing were strictly forbidden as my grandpa was a staunch Buddhist! Dei, how did I survive my childhood days? I often swam in flooded murky waters with neighbourhood kids and climbed the hills opposite our house to catch monkeys. We all drank untreated rain water at home and survived too. Come April 13 yearly, I would hose the passing cars and Thai folks with water during their annual Songkran Festival. In return some bitches would smear my face with white powder and iced water to numb my hands. It was truly fun and happiest time. There were no worries and everything was just Sabai, Sabai....

My grandpa was originally from Samutprakan in Bangkok where his family mined salt from the sea and that made him so saltish and stingy. His last CPO posting was in the South and he decided to retire in my grandma's native town in Songkhla where he preferred the laid back & peaceful lifestyle. Eventually, he bought a small wooden house on stilts nearby the Thalae Sap Songkhla which is the biggest natural lake in Thailand. He kept making extensions to his house and compound until when he passed away. By then, his house had transformed into a big concrete 2 storey house with 9 rooms on 1 acre of high gated land which was surrounded by many shophouses he had built. He had 4 maids and lived comfortably on his collected rents & pension. Next door to his house is the famous Wat Laemsai Temple where he often invited the monks over for lunch weekly. I played inside and outside that temple grounds all my life. Come next week, I will be back to the old house and playground once again.

This is the old photo taken outside the same temple where I played most evenings. Can you guess which brat is ME?

Sawasdee Kub!